Cape Town - With wild fires still raging in parts of North America, eight firefighters from NCC Environmental Services have been deployed to Missoula, Montana, in the US.
This follows 600 firefighters who were sent to and returned from Canada to fight fires in parts of that country bordering the US.
The latest batch of firefighters left on Saturday night.
Over the weekend, a Fire Weather Watch was issued for this afternoon and evening across portions of central Idaho and north-west Montana. The US National Weather Service said hot, dry, and windy weather conditions could result in critical fire weather and the potential for new and existing fires to spread quickly.
Managing director, Dean Ferreira, said: “There has already been a request for additional crews and we will be sorting this out in the days to come.”
Ferreira said this was the fifth deployment to Montana where firefighters were contracted to Rocky Mountain Fire Company (RMFC).
“Our crews are integrated into the RMFC crews, and when they deploy to fires they are RMFC crew members. The fires in the US differ greatly to what we experience here, from a scale, intensity and fuel point of view, however the qualifications, aptitude and attitude is the same everywhere.
“With what we learn overseas, we bring back greater experience to be more efficient and effective in what we do in South Africa,” he said.
Meanwhile, Working on Fire (WoF), a programme within the Department of Forestry, Fisheries, and the Environment,
deployed a third team of 200 firefighters and 15 managers to assist with combating wildfires in Canada, as its first and second teams return home.
The team, dubbed “Mzanzi3 Hotshots”, departed from the Kruger Mpumalanga International Airport on July 18, while the Mzanzi2 Hotshots were scheduled to return on July 20.
WoF said in a statement: “The Mzanzi3 Hotshots deployment will bring the total number of the Working on Fire Programme firefighters and managers deployed to Canada since the first team's departure on June 3, 2023, to 600 and 43, respectively.
“Their arrival will bolster the ongoing international joint firefighting efforts, reinforcing that international collaboration is key to combating these unprecedented wildfires,” WoF said in a statement.
